Exhibition Flight Of Fancy At Air And Space Museum

WASHINGTON — The national Air and Space Museum has installed a hands-on, gee-whiz gallery that is guaranteed to pull even more patrons into what already is the world's most popular museum.

''How Things Fly'' is the most complex, user-friendly, ambitious exhibition in the museum's 20-year history. It includes 50 ''interactives'' designed to give kids and their parents a real feel for (and of) the forces involved in flight.

There are things to push, pull, pump, pry, lift, drop, grab and fly. There are motors and rotors, flying wings and vortex rings, cutaways and stage displays, things to heat and things to beat, online computers and live tutors.

There is a supersonic wind tunnel in which kids can generate genuine shock waves, and several subsonic ones that can be manipulated to show the effects of lift, drag and stall. There is a cutaway Cessna, a real Cessna to sit in, and a radio-controlled scale-model Cessna to fly (it's tethered).

Other exhibits include a reflex tester in which a vertical meter stick is released at random by an electromagnet. You're supposed to grab it between thumb and forefinger as quickly as possible. The posted record, set by a hotshot pilot, is a 200 mm drop.

Dueling air sleds demonstrate the nearly frictionless glide of an object supported on a cushion of air. Floating above a rail perforated with vents (much like an air-hockey game), the sleds are propelled from the ends of the rail by magnet-wielding opponents who are rewarded with collisions and demonstrations of magnetic propulsion and proportional momentum.

Every effort is bent toward making airy concepts concrete. A 4-ton pile of bricks demonstrates the weight of the volume of air in the room. A big, heavy rocket topped by a featherweight space capsule shows how much fuel and machinery it takes to get a modest payload into orbit.

There are brief talks and demonstrations throughout the day in an amphitheater area.

For information on museum hours, call the National Air and Space Museum at (202) 357-2700.